With development of network technologies, data transmission rates are increasing. In response to this trend, the sampling rate of an analog to digital converter (ADC, Analog to Digital Converter) is also increasing.
Nowadays, various data processing devices are highly digitalized. Therefore, a large amount of devices, such as a frequency spectrum analyzer and a power analyzer, needs to be connected to an ADC to obtain a digital signal for subsequent processing.
The ADC performs sampling on an analog signal to obtain an analog sample value and converts the analog sample value to a group of digital signals by performing analog-to-digital conversion. During each sampling cycle, the ADC obtains one analog sample value by performing sampling, and outputs a group of digital signals to subsequent a data processing device for processing.
For example, the sampling rate of an ADC is 100 Hz, which means that the ADC obtains 100 analog sample values per second; the resolution of analog-to-digital conversion is eight bits, which means that each analog sample value is quantized by using eight bits. The ADC converts one analog sample value to an 8-bit digital signal and outputs a total of 800 bits per second. That is to say, the rate of an interface for outputting digital signals on the ADC is 0.8 Kbps. Therefore, a subsequent data processing device connected to the ADC also needs to receive a digital signal at this interface rate, and processes each bit of the digital signal.
When the sampling rate of the ADC increases, the rate of the interface for outputting digital signals on the ADC also increases. To match the increased rate for outputting digital signals, a data processing device connected to the ADC must work at a high rate, thereby increasing power consumption of the entire system.